Stereotypes and settlements

Delegitimizing half a million Jews won't bring peace any closer

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Some American Jewish "leaders" and organizations just can't help themselves.
Faced with the collapse of the Oslo peace process that so many of them
supported and a Palestinian terror war against Israel that has lasted for
29-months, the hard-core liberal Jewish establishment in this country simply
will not give up.

Events and Palestinian-Arab intransigence have conclusively proven that
peaceful resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Arabs cannot be
manufactured by Israeli concessions. But that hasn't stopped many people from
continuing to obsess about settlements.

In the last year, the Reform movement has published a series of studies
bashing the existence of Jewish communities in the West Bank and Gaza, and
even promoted a nationwide program of discussion about the topic at their
synagogues. And this week they proposed a controversial resolution at the
annual gathering of the Jewish Council of Public Affairs urging Israel to
adopt the same sort of "freeze" on settlement that the Jewish state has
previously resisted.

The members and institutions of Reform have responded to the crisis of the
last 29 months with the same empathy, and emotional and financial support for
Israel's people as the rest of American Jewry. Yet, by seeking to get
American Jewry on the record as supporting a settlement freeze and a
Palestinian state, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the head of Reform's Union of American
Hebrew Congregations, seemed to be sending a message to Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon and his newly elected government not to count on them
when push comes to shove in future negotiations.

The resolution was defeated, but, by seizing on the settlement issue, Yoffie
and company attacked the now triumphant forces of Israel's center-right
governing coalition at its most vulnerable point.

FORESTALLING A PALESTINIAN STATE

Yoffie and many others, here and in Israel, believe the creation of a
Palestinian state is a prerequisite for peace. They also think Israel's
future safety depends on such a Palestinian state because the maintenance of
a status quo that incorporates millions of hostile Arabs inside Israel's
borders threatens Israeli democracy and security. If we assume, as we should,
that expulsion of the Arabs in the territories is neither moral nor a viable
solution, what do you with them?

Few Jewish leaders will argue that Jews have no right to live or build in the
territories. Settlements are neither illegal nor immoral. But in this
formulation, the existence of the settlements and their expansion merely
makes a future accord with the Palestinians more difficult.

Since even Sharon now says he can envisage a peace with a Palestinian state,
albeit one that is both democratic and that has truly renounced violence
against Israel, a freeze can be made to sound reasonable.

But the problem with this analysis is that we are not arguing in a vacuum.
The last three years have shown us that the Palestinians never were inte
rested in a "land for peace" deal. Arab rejectionism is the "obstacle" to
peace, not the settlements. The Palestinian Authority's promotion of
Jew-hatred has created a situation where it may well be that the best Israel
can hope for is to actively defend itself against the infrastructure of
terror while waiting for circumstances to change. A two-state solution seems
to be no more a guarantee of peace than the status quo.

Sharon is smart to talk of accepting a state under highly specific
circumstances, but the odds of anything like a peaceful, democratic
Palestinian state coming into existence are highly improbable.

But will a settlement freeze advance the chances of it happening?
It is far more likely that it would have, like previous Israeli concessions,
just the opposite effect.

By renouncing even the most precarious of settlements, such as those in Gaza,
Israel will be repeating the mistake it made during Ehud Barak's skedaddle
from Lebanon in the spring of 2000. Under present circumstances, Israel's mili
tary believes such a gesture would only embolden the Palestinians to step up
their attacks, not to lessen them.

Nor would a surrender of the equally precarious hot spot of Hebron help
things. By giving up the place where Jewish history began, Israel will again
be sending an unintended signal to Palestinians that the Jews will renounce
their patrimony and have lost their will to resist. The result would
undoubtedly be more bloodshed, not less.

And freezing settlement really would not affect these controversial
settlements. The only "expansion" that has gone on in the territories are in
those places that the overwhelming majority of Israelis have no intention of
giving up, such as in the town of Efrat in the Gush Etzion bloc (where
kibbutzim were destroyed by Arab invaders in 1948). Effectively, calling for
a freeze is saying that the Jews of Efrat and other heavily populated
communities near the 1949 armistice lines would be on the chopping bloc.

MARKED FOR DEATH

Settlement freeze advocates also need to understand another key fact.

Stigmatizing the more than 200,000 Jews who live in the territories as an
unnecessary burden on the Jewish people and an obstacle to peace feeds into
the propaganda by which some Arabs falsely claim that attacks on these Jews
are not terrorism but self-defense.

The portrayal of these Jews as lunatics who are all itching to kill Arabs is
by now a common stereotype held by many Americans. And though a tiny
extremist minority of supporters of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane might fit this
description, the overwhelming majority do not.

Though many American Jews act as if rhetoric that delegitimizes settlements
has no cost, this is not true. The Jews in the territories, whether they are
young or old, religious or secular, hard-line or moderate, have all been
marked for death by the Palestinian Authority and its Islamic allies.

And since most of the world sees no distinction between the more than 200,000
Jews who live in those parts of Jerusalem that were occupied by Jordan from
1949 to 1967, what we are really talking about is the idea that nearly half a
million Jews are considered fair game for murder even by Arab "moderates" and
many of their European supporters. Any action or statement by American Jews
which reinforces this mindset is an unforgivable blunder.

By raising the idea of a settlement freeze now, Yoffie is showing more than
bad timing. It is a sign that, should the pressure for Israeli concessions
resume after the conclusion of a war against Iraq, a major portion of
American Jewry may not support the democratically elected government of
Israel in its efforts to avoid steps which will endanger Jewish lives.

Most Jews, including many Reform Jews, understand a point that Yoffie
apparently does not. At the moment, no one in either Israel or the United
States has a formula in their pocket that will bring peace. Under these
circumstances, a little more humility on the part of Jewish leaders is called
for. Sniping at Israel and seeking to impose conditions on it while it is at
war, and while it lacks a peace partner, is not the action of a friend or
ally. While Palestinian terror continues with little letup, this is not the
time for American Jews to play such games.